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It's just another thing I can moan about in one of my general hate-filled rants.
It might not be relevant to the argument of the quality of her music, but it's an opinion I wanted to voice in passing while I was making another point.
I find In For The Kill very catchy and fun to dance to! Everyone I've seen in most bars/clubs knows the words, sings along and dances like a loon to it!
Maybe it's just me then... Thing is though, there's a difference between 'catchy' and simply popular. I know my phone number off by heart, but it doesn't mean it's easy to remember - it's simply because I've had to ram it down my own throat. Similarly, you might find yourself whistling 'In For The Kill', but consider whether it's because it's actually a memorable tune or simply because you've heard it 300 times.
Her album is fairly disappointing but there are some nice enough songs on it to make it worth a listen. Bulletproof is a very funky track though, even without the vocals it would make for a catchy bit of electro (Most of the album is similar too, it sounds very 80s). Out of interest, which songs have you listened to besides In For The Kill?
All I've done is gone through the previews on iTunes a couple of times (IFTK aside, which you simply can't escape), but they all sounded faintly mediocre to me. Bulletproof doesn't sound too bad actually - far less grating than the almighty 'In For The Kill' anyway. Worringly I actually quite liked it :S
...but I stand by my previous hatred. 1 good song out of 13 isn't
really enough.
As for doing 'whatever NME says', a friend of mine was a fan of hers before she became well known and she's always been the same. She hasn't changed one bit now she's well known.
Well that doesn't surprise me - nearly every group has some genuine 'I liked them before they were cool' fans. My point was that it wouldn't surprise me if a good majority of La Roux's 'bIGGest eevAR LIKE wOW!' type fans exist purely on an sheep-style basis. I.E. everyone else likes them, therefore I do too. Even if it is on a subconscious level. I just stuck NME as a quick example of an 'authoritative' figure whose opinions generally filter through to the nation. I'm not necessarily suggesting that everyone who likes her simply read it in NME. Although it did sound a bit like that... whoops.
If you find anything that NME references annoying then surely you must end up hating 99% of popular music?
Funnily enough, I do a bit. I have a bit of a dislike for anything that sounds like it could well have been produced in under 30 minutes. In For The Kill sounds like that. It's like a 12 year old boy playing with the arpeggio function of an old keyboard - you don't need talent, you just need to sort of hit one note at a time in a reasonably repetitive manner and you have it. And it
does sound like that - the tune even hits some slightly-off chords that sound sort of uneasy and horrible.
It just sounds too... simple. I'm aware that it probably
didn't take 30 minutes to produce, but I'd quite like to be reassured of that fact by even a little depth of some sort. And it's certainly not the nature of the electronic genre - I've heard plenty of electro-pop that sounds far more interesting. Well one album, but it's about the only other electro-pop album I think I've heard this year.
Anyway, the other thing I dislike is the generic quaintness of it all. It's designed to sound like it was from the '80s, but it doesn't. Well it wouldn't really, seeing how Elly Jackson was born in 1988 and so probably has about as much memory of the '80s as I have. It all reminds me a bit of Marty McFly's cowboy gear in Back To The Future:
Something tells me that if we stuck La Roux back in the '80s they wouldn't stand a chance.
Of course, following the unwritten rule of 'Every song in the world must be 100% literal' , it makes no sense.
Again, it's not like I rule out every song because it doesn't make sense. I provided a nice little catalogue of reasons why I dislike In For The Kill, and they all add up to a giant UGH. One can dismiss individual problems with something, but you've got to look at the whole picture too.
Anyway, I don't generally scribe down the reasons why I hate something. I just felt the need to back-up my generally ramblings somehow.
That's such a brilliant comparison.
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